


Past, Present, (Possible) Future

by stravaganza



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Case Fic, College, Denial of Feelings, Feelings, First Meetings, First Relationship, Fluff, If you prefer you can imagine JJ Feild they are quite similar, Jealous John, Jealousy, M/M, Modernization, Past Relationship(s), Pining, Pre-Reichenbach, Story: The Adventure of the Gloria Scott, Teenage Sherlock, Tom Hiddleston Fancast As Victor Trevor, Uni!lock, University, date, depends on how the mood settles, may contain porn later, teen!lock
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-06-02
Updated: 2014-12-13
Packaged: 2018-02-03 05:09:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,726
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1732325
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stravaganza/pseuds/stravaganza
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>“Have I ever told you about Victor Trevor?” Sherlock asked, his voice sounding almost uncharacteristically soft.</i><br/><i>John sighed and headed for the kitchen. “I'm going to put the kettle on, because I'm sure you’re about to.”</i><br/>-<br/>My take at a modernization of the Adventure of the Gloria Scott. And a return of an old friend of Sherlock's, who may rise a few questions about his and John's feelings...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue: 221B Baker Street

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ineffableboyfriends](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ineffableboyfriends/gifts).



> So. This story was commissioned to me by ineffableboyfriends way back in September 2012 as a prize for winning my tumblr giveaway. Many things happened since then (mainly my own procrastination, struggling with depression, university and exams being awful, and the kidnapping of my laptop last February, just as the story was almost done).
> 
> First chapter beta'd by lovely AO3 and tumblr user katrinedugas, every mistake you may find is mine and mine alone.
> 
> This said, I hope you all enjoy it!

One of the reasons Sherlock loved to be awake at night was John.  He was there in case he needed him, just in arm’s reach . If a case came through, Sherlock didn’t have to text John and wait for him to bypass his job, the shopping, or his latest date; instead, he could just call for him –   pry the duvet off of him, at worse, and then wait the mere five minutes his military training had taught him he needed to get dressed before being on their merry way.

Yet the flat was quiet, so much so that it seemed empty. It often caused Sherlock to lose track of time. He would get lost in his thoughts, and when the time came that he needed to tell John something, he would find that he had already left for his morning shift at the clinic. Not that it occurred as often as it used to, though. Now John always made clear he was going out, except on the rare occasions when the sleeping form of his flatmate, seldom seen, discouraged John to wake him.

That morning, since he was still awake when John came downstairs, the doctor didn’t think twice about resting a hand on Sherlock’s shoulder to shake him out of his mind palace and back into Baker Street. And Sherlock, in turn, didn’t think twice about glaring at him, or throwing the Union Jack cushion against his head as the man turned to march into the kitchen.

John took the blow and huffed. “It’s too early for you to be childish. Or too late, in your case. It doesn’t really matter, you’re going to get up and have breakfast with me.”

“And why would I?” Sherlock asked, a frown still marking his face. John didn’t even turn around to regard his question, continuing with the tedious task of preparing their breakfast.

“Because,” he started, “today is the day you agreed we would put some of your stuff away. Remember? Mrs Hudson complaining about the mess, and you replying that you’d ‘put it all away in three months’ in a fit of rage? Well, I kept track, and it is that time of the year!”

Sherlock groaned and pressed the heels of his hands onto his eyes. John couldn’t possibly have thought that he had been serious, and he most certainly couldn’t demand he’d do that now!

“I am in the middle of something,” he said. No reason in trying to explain he had been tidying up his smell index.

“I’m sure whatever it is you were doing can wait. Come on, even you can’t possibly know where everything is in this chaos!” John said, turning around and wielding his frying pan as he edged  the eggs and bacon onto a couple of plates.

The smell was enticing, after all, and the last case had finished two days earlier. That had also been the last time he’d eaten anything . Sherlock sighed and sat up, ruffling the mess of curls on his head before readjusting his dressing gown, tying  the belt tightly around his waist. It took him a few more moments to stand, because he didn’t want to relent  so easily, but his growling stomach finally convinced him up off the couch and into one of the kitchen chairs, where he started eating the cooling eggs hungrily.

***

Several boxes lay scattered haphazardly on the floor, some empty and lying on one side, others half filled with papers of different kinds, from documents to pictures, to sticky notes, to books and notebooks, drawings and loose scraps .

Sherlock was looking at a pile of his old school records when John chuckled quietly. He turned his head and raised an eyebrow, without asking further as to an explanation.

John shook his head and silently, except for his giggles, handed Sherlock an old, sepia  photograph, complete with white-rimming. A couple of corners sported one or more creases ruining the once glossy paper and turning it white, and bigger crease indicated where the picture had been folded carefully, despite the signs of it having been bent, maybe  by accident. The subjects were two young men, not older than twenty, both with big smiles on their faces.

One of them was clearly Sherlock, his hair an indistinguishable  light colour. The other was leaning on him, one forearm propped on his shoulder. He was standing, and Sherlock sitting.

“What colour is that? Blonde? Don’t tell me you’re dyed !” John asked him, his own words provoking more laughter.

Sherlock absently ran a hand through his hair, looking down at the photograph. “Ginger…” he replied, half-mindedly . He took the picture from John’s fingers and looked at it, running his thumb over the other man’s face. That instantly stopped John’s hysterics. The doctor frowned and glanced from the picture to Sherlock’s face.

“Who’s that?” he asked. Sherlock looked… fond. Which is more than he usually bothered to show.

“A… friend. An old friend. He dared us both to dye our hair ginger, but he was blonde, so just had to colour it. I had to bleach mine and then colour it, which is why my hair, ironically, ended up more orange than him.” He smiled at the memory, and remembered Victor’s words:

‘I can’t be less ginger than you! Let’s take the photo in black and white!’

 In the end they had settled with sepia and left it to that.

“Friend? You never told me about any friend,” John stated, crossing his arms over his chest.

The corners of Sherlock’s lips quirked upwards, and he glanced away from the picture. “Victor Trevor. This was my first case,” he said, smiling. Not quite like in the photo, but still looking pretty happy.

This seemed to all but ease John’s confusion. “What? I thought you had said Carl Powers was your first case?” he asked.

Sherlock waved a hand. “This is the first one I solved,” he said. “I was twenty.” He opened one of the low cupboards built-in the bookshelves, and used it as a stool, stepping on the small shelves to peer over the edge of some books.

“Sherlock,” John hissed, already worried the wood might give in.

The detective ignored him, of course, and reached over a few tomes, pulling out a small metal cylinder covered in dust. He smirked and blew air to clean it, proceeding to then unscrew the shorter half and take a tightly rolled scroll of paper out.

“This, John, is the message that gave the father of the Judge of the Peace Carters  a fatal heart attack,” he said, handing him the small paper.

“That’s horrible,” the doctor said with a frown.

Sherlock shrugged. “He was a hundred and one. If not this, then something else,” he said.

John gave him a disapproving glare, and then focused on the content of the message:

_“The journey went well - the game on the other hand is starting to bore me up. I have seen the Hudson, the New York river – has been navigated, I was told years back, by almost everything. Remarkable! You should soon fly over to see it. For my part, I’ll visit your home as soon as life gives me a chance.”_

John finished his reading of the paper and frowned deeply. His eyes scanned the words again a few more times, but failed to grasp anything that could cause a heart attack.

“Was this man scared of bad English?” he asked, confused.

Sherlock smirked. “It seems inoffensive, but there’s clearly a hidden message underneath the more evident one,” he said, sounding almost excited. “Have I ever told you about Victor Trevor?” he asked, his voice sounding almost uncharacteristically soft.

John sighed and headed for the kitchen. “I’m going to put the kettle on, because I’m sure you’re about to.”

***


	2. Past: Cambridge, The Case of Gloria Scott, and Summer '98

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah, I know, I'm slow... Still, hope this is alright! Not beta'd, though, so if you spot any mistakes don't hesitate to point them out. Enjoy!

“It was my third day at Cambridge,” Sherlock started, a steaming mug of tea in his hands. John sat across from him, occupying his usual chair. “I was nineteen. My parents had left me there the Friday before, on my request. I wanted to know the campus before the lessons started, and they regretfully accepted.”

“I bet you had the place memorized by the end of the first day,” John said with a smirk as he sipped at his tea. Sherlock raised an eyebrow at him, and the doctor laughed. “Oh, sorry- by dinner time, then.”

Sherlock rolled his eyes a bit, and continued after taking a sip from his own mug.

“Yes, well. Anyway. It was the day before the start of the lessons. The college had been practically empty apart from me and a few other majoring students, but on Sunday it was already swarming with people, most of them too dumb to be there but too rich to be anywhere else.’

“I was on my way to the principal’s office, to revise my timetable. I had been told he wouldn’t listen to any complaint until classes had officially begun, but my program included utterly useless courses that I had no intention of taking, such as Astronomy, Advanced History, and English Literature.”

He ignored John’s huff of disbelieving laughter and continued, unfazed.

“Victor and I met… Well, it happened in the most unusual way, as you can imagine.” Sherlock waited for John to smile amiably at him, before declaring nonchalantly, “I was just a few buildings away from my dorm when I was attacked.”

John sat up straighter, a frown creasing his feature. Sherlock smirked at his fight or flight response, and looked at the depths of his tea after taking a long sip for dramatic effect.

“It was a dog. An English bulldog, to be precise,” he finally continued, watching with amusement as John rolled his eyes and relaxed again, resuming his ‘story time’ pose. “She had escaped her owner’s leash, and had gone around to try and bite as many ankles as possible. I was so engrossed with my planned complaint to the principal that I didn’t even see her coming until it was too late. I was bitten, and literally fell on my arse before I even knew what had hit me.’

“But I didn’t even have time to look around that there was a woman fussing all over me. She was blonde and short, but had the highest pitched voice I have ever heard to date. She apologized, and said that Eliza had never done something like that before, and she must have gotten excited because of all the people going around… I just wanted her to shut up, she was terribly annoying as you can imagine, but before I could reply rudely her son was by her side.’

“He was tall, with a head of tightly coiled, dark blonde curls and sharp features even for a boy of his age, as you can see,” he said, gesturing to the picture, now resting on the coffee table. “He had such honest blue eyes that I couldn’t bring myself to snap at him. After all, he had managed to shut his mother up, and afterwards he helped me up, and let me use him as a crutch until we got me to the infirmary.’

“Of course, my mother was _delighted_ when I called her and told her how I would be stuck to bed for the first two to four weeks of classes because ‘a friend’s dog had tried to tear my right leg off’.”

John laughed into his tea. “Yes, I can imagine that,” he grinned. Sherlock too had to smile as well.

“I didn’t quite put it like that, actually, but she seemed sure that it was a ‘sign of destiny’, and that ‘you’ll finally have a friend’, and ‘what a charming young man must he be!’… She always assumed I wasn’t much into women,” he added, quickly, as an explanation, but John did not comment, merely nodded.

“As I was saying. I obviously denied everything, and told mummy that I never wanted anything to do with him and his blasted dog again, but ‘manners, Sherlock, he was nice enough to help you walk back in, and he called the doctor for you, did he not? It’s not his fault his mother couldn’t keep a dog still’…” he rolled his eyes a bit at the memory. “Of course, she was right, but at the time I was so livid about being restrained that I didn’t want to listen to reason.’

“Victor, however, felt so guilty about what had happened that he took it as his personal mission to always bring me notes from the classes we had in common, and recordings of the classes we didn’t, and to spend at least an hour every single day briefing me over what I had missed. At first it was, as you can imagine, terribly annoying. I didn’t want to see him and his overly cheerful face, or his overly polite manners, not to mention his overly wide smile. I just wanted to be left alone with my books, certain that I could manage the classes just fine on my own. Which, of course, I could have.’

“But after some time, I started to almost look forward the time Victor spent with me. Despite my stubbornness and rudeness, and the many requests to ‘get lost’, he still came every day, and the visits became longer overtime, until he was spending whole afternoons with me. Moreover, as time went by, I found that I did not mind as much as I thought I would. Which was very strange, seen that the only company I tolerated before Victor’s was… well, my own. And Mycroft’s, before he became as annoying as he is now. And yes, my parents’, too, but with some limitations,” he added quickly at John’s knowing smirk. He had always been joking about how he must have been a mummy’s boy, seen his relationship with Mrs Hudson.

“Anyway,” he said, dismissive of John’s small laugh. “Before too long, I realized that I did have something akin to a friend. After the two weeks were over and I could go to class on my own, he stuck with me. As it turned out, he too was rather friendless, despite being a lively, attractive young man with many traits that were opposite to my own. He was sociable, funny and outgoing, and yet he had decided that of all the people who liked him there, I was to be his only friend. We would sit together at lunch, and talk about this and that, and he used to laugh at my deductions. At first he thought I was making things up, but when he understood I wasn’t, he seemed... smitten.’

“We started going everywhere together. At first, he said it was to make sure I didn’t fall on my face while trying to figure the crutches out, but then he admitted that it was because he liked my company. Actually _liked_ being with me, while I deduced people, while I insulted arseholes, and while I shamed our teachers by knowing more than they did about stuff. While I was just being myself, and doing the things that drive most people up the wall.”

“Yes, I know that feeling. It’s a weird one, I’ll have to agree, but it’s also… worthwhile,” John interjected with a smirk.

“I’ll remind you that he wasn’t an adrenaline junkie, and that at the time I wasn’t even solving crimes. Just finding out who was cheating on tests, who had affairs with whom, and who had an addiction or the other. But when I wasn’t doing that, we were listening to music, or he would just listen to me playing. Sometimes we would go to the fields and just study there, while when it rained we’d go to the library and read books, laughing at the most absurd ones or looking for mistakes in academic textbooks.’

“When I was fully recovered, we even started going to town every now and then, hence the picture. Overall, it was a friendship, something I never had before. Not like that. Not with someone of my same age, at least… But again, those weren’t friendships, merely people I tolerated.”

John looked thoughtfully at Sherlock, and the detective paused to allow him to pose his question. John flushed slightly, and seemed a bit reluctant, but then he did talk: “I don’t want to assume anything, but… was there anything between the two of you, like… something romantic?”

Sherlock had been aware for a long time that John was deeply curious about his past life, but not in a bad way. He liked to think of it as a scholar trying to unravel a mystery of sorts. He knew it was to find out why he became the man he was now. He merely shrugged and looked away before replying, after a thoughtful silence.

“Well. I suppose there was, but it was never expressed. You could say I had… feelings of sorts, in his regard, but I never spoke them, afraid of the strain it might put on our friendship. Seen as I didn’t have any other base of reference, I didn’t even know if they were normal things to feel for a friend or not, and I didn’t want to risk sounding like an idiot, or worse ruining our friendship. As it later transpired, he too was rather… fond of me.”

He knew he sounded regretful, and he was, in a way. He wondered what might have happened had he spoken earlier, and most of all, he wondered how things would have unfolded between them, seen what had happened briefly after their friendship had been fully formed.

Sherlock cleared his throat, and resumed his telling once more.

“Please, now don’t interrupt me... I am about to tell you about the last time I saw Victor, and I’d rather say it all at once. It’s not a complicated story, and I’ll try to keep it brief,” he said.

John nodded in understanding, and licked his lips, his eyes trained on Sherlock’s downcast face.

“It was summer of 1998. We were twenty-one years old, and we had just finished our first three years at Cambridge. We needed to decide how to continue our scholastic career, and since it was possible that it would be our last summer together, Victor had invited me back to spend a month in his family’s house. As you may recall, Victor’s grandfather, Peter Carters, was a Judge of the Peace. Before that, he had covered many other important roles in the British law system, and had earned a fair share of money, other than the ones he already had. You could say they were pretty rich.’

“He was only happy to have his only daughter, Margaret, marry to a poor but well intentioned lawyer, a certain Joseph Trevor. Money did not present a problem for him, and he must have assumed that Mr Trevor wasn’t a gold-digger despite his humble bearings. He was an honest lawyer like he himself had been, and that was enough for him. Unfortunately, he died when Victor was around ten, in a plane crash.’

“That weakened Carters’ state, as he was already of advanced age and very fond of the man. He seemed to see something of his young self in him, despite the fact that he had grown up in family money, and his death left him very depressed. The fact that he was already developing a heart condition didn’t help him, especially not that summer, eleven years later.’

“We were at Victor’s estate, in a place in Norfolk called Donnithorpe, and it was the perfect picture of the noble British man’s summer house. It was a huge old-fashioned brick cottage, with heavy oak doors and beams, the grey front of the house half covered by ivy and moss, with a dark roof and small, square guillotine windows. I can still remember him driving us up the white gravelled path, unwinding through the fields that spread far past the entrance gate. It was ludicrously big, with a fishing pond and a small wood where Victor’s father used to hunt rabbits. They even had a _stable_ , John!’

“But there were few people there. Other than Victor’s mother and grandfather, there were a cantankerous cook, an annoying maid, Mr Carters’ nurse and a drunk gardener, and no one else. It had a very small library, too, and only because the previous owner left it, and Victor’s father enriched it with law textbooks. Victor was studying law as well, when we met. It’s the only reason I kept taking Literature and other subjects, really, as they were the only classes we had in common.”

Sherlock paused to take a small sip of his tea, and John shifted in his chair, looking carefully at his friend, as if he were worried he might shatter. But of course, that was absurd. The memory wasn’t that bad, just… a memory. He sipped at his tea again to wet his throat, and then looked at John again.

“While there I found out a few things I didn’t know about Victor, like the fact that he had a stillborn elder sister, and that his mother had an affair with someone, although at the time I didn’t know who… I heard they’re married now,” he said with a shrug, slumping back in his chair.

“His grandfather was still very intelligent despite the strains of his body, and he was very interested in my deductions after Victor had told him about them. At the time, they were still a work in progress, little more than a hobby. The Carl Powers case had made me realize I had potential, but I had never thought much of it. Never thought I could make a career out of it, but the events of that summer made me change my mind.’

“He had travelled the world but knew little of books, he had known hard labour as a young man but had also been used to the rich life. When I told him these deductions, he was surprised yet amused, only to then have a minor attack when I made one more deduction that he wasn’t expecting. It regarded a silver locket he was wearing, with the initials G.S. carved into its surface.’

“For days I wondered if my deduction might have caused his conditions to worsen, if my words had agitated him so that when the message arrived he had no chance. I wondered if it were possible that, had I shut up, he might have survived it. But then Victor told me not to linger on it, that I couldn’t know, and I tried to listen to his advice.’

“Clearly Mr Carters wasn’t expecting me to deduce about the woman who owned the locket before him, but he brushed it off as the painful memory of a long lost lover, and that he wasn’t expecting me to notice such detail since he had clearly tried to have the letters melted off the locket. The work wasn’t that well done, though, and I could still see the letters.’

“From that moment, Mr Carters always regarded me with suspicion, as if I knew more than I let on, when the only thing I knew was that he was hiding something. Victor told me as much, too. Said that he had never seen his grandfather acting so secretive about anything before. ‘You surprised him so much that he won’t ever again be sure about what you know and what you don’t know!’, he told me. And I suppose that was true.’

“Then, one day, before I left, something happened. We were in the garden, laying in the sun, old Carter in his wheelchair, Victor’s mother reading a book with her horrid dog sitting beside her chair, and Victor and I were looking at a fallen beehive we had found near the house. The maid came to announce us that Mr Carters had a visitor, and that he wouldn’t give his name, but wanted to meet in private.’

“Mr Carters went and met with him, and when we returned to the house hours later we found him on the verge of another attack. The man was nowhere to be seen, but whatever he and Carters had discussed off must have been important and troubling, I thought. And I was right.’

“I left the house shortly after, my month of vacation there up and my own house calling me back. I spent the rest of the summer doing experiments with organic chemistry, to my mother’s chagrin, but most of the time I’d just be bored and, incredibly, missing Victor’s company.’

“But before summer was done, I received a distressed call from him, who urged me to go back. I rushed to the railway station and got on the first train, all the while listening to his explanation. Apparently, after I left, the man had returned. He had spent weeks as a guest in their estate, being incredibly rude and extremely unpleasant to everyone, but Mr Carters had insisted they all treat him with respect when he gave none to anyone else.’

“Eventually, Mrs Trevor had enough of him, and insisted he left. He said he would leave for Hampshire, and they didn’t hear from him again. That is, until the morning of the call. A letter had arrived, from Hampshire. The letter that you read earlier. But the message was ludicrously written, and we were bewildered: how could it cause an attack of apoplexy in an old man?’

“When I arrived, Victor was at the station, and handed me the message. It was clear that there must have been a hidden message in it, and it must have been connected to the man, and possibly with the locket that Mr Carters held so dear that he nearly fainted upon my mentioning the letters engraved onto it. But the more I read it, the less sense I could give it.’

“Victor mentioned that his grandfather had a friend in Hampshire, a slightly younger man which he had known during his boyhood, but of which he seldom spoke. The man had fallen into a coma a few months prior, and whatever the mysterious man who had visited the Trevor’s estate was looking for couldn’t be found there because of that.’

“By the time we arrived to the house, Victor’s grandfather was dead. He had been on the brink all night long, and could not make it any longer. Victor was obviously devastated, and I was just as shocked. I had never been so close to death before. The nurse said that Mr Carters had mentioned something that was to be known, and his Japanese cabinet.’

“Victor went and looked into it, and found a secret compartment in which an old diary was hidden. His mother did not want to read it, but we were curious about what might have been the cause of Carters’ death, so we studied it. It became clear, after a while, that there was a hidden message in the words. Here, see? Read only the first word every fifth and it’ll become clear, as well as the reason of the bad English.”

Sherlock handed the note to John again, and indeed, it now read what it should:

_“ **The** journey went well - the **game** on the other hand **is** starting to bore me **up**. I have seen the **Hudson** , the New York river – **has** been navigated, I was **told** years back, by almost **everything**. Remarkable! You should soon **fly** over to see it. **For** my part, I’ll visit **your** home as soon as **life** gives me a chance.”_

“The game is up. Hudson has told everything. Fly for your life. Well, now, that’s quite heart attack inducing, for sure,” John said with a small whistle between his teeth. “But how could he know there was a code?”

Sherlock smiled and resumed his story telling.

“Yes, how. It was clear that the man in Hampshire had already told his son about what we were about to disclose reading the diary, and he knew how to inform Mr Carters about the imminent danger, which he did. He surely didn’t think he’d be the cause of his death.”

“But still, what could have been so big a secret to cause his death?” John asked, frowning.

Sherlock put his mug of tea down and steepled his hands beneath his chin, regarding him with the usual steely expression with which he spoke of solved crimes.

“What indeed, John. I would have never imagined the complexity of the matter, weren’t it for the tattered diary that Victor and I recovered from old Carters’ cabinet. It held the key to the whole thing, and it was something that had begun a great deal of years before. More precisely, in 1912, on a boat called… _Titanic_.”

John’s eyebrows rose almost to his hairline, but then he huffed a laugh. “If you start singing Celine Dion now I swear I’ll never take anything you say seriously ever again,” he said. But he needn’t worry, as Sherlock’s confused expression soon made clear: he had no idea what he was talking about, so John simply gestured for him to continue.

“Anyway. What had happened was that Mr Carters, only aged fifteen at the time, had not been born to a rich family at all. He was an orphan, and he had been working on docks and sailboats as a ship’s boy since he was very young. When he got on the _Titanic_ it was, like many others, to try and change his life. He would work there as a servant, and once in America he would start over with his life. Which he did, but not in the way he expected.’

“He worked there with a friend, whom he calls Jack in the diary, and whom we assumed to be the comatose man in Hampshire. They worked in the kitchens, as delivery boys, they cleaned the halls and did all and more, just to earn a few coins. However, after a few days on the ship, Mr Carters had met a woman, young, beautiful, and rich, Miss Gloria Scott. She was twenty-two and on a pleasure cruise with her family and few of their servants.’

“For a short time, Mr Carters and Ms Scott shared a romance, but her family found out and put an end to what, to her, was only a game to pass the time. That hurt the young Carters, who took advantage of his position as room sweeper to break into Ms Scott’s cabin and steal a few of her belongings, included the locket she wore and some bank papers. His friend Jack was his second, and they shared the profits. Profits they made once back in England, after the _Titanic_ had sunk and the Scotts had perished, while they had saved themselves by mere chance.”

John shook his head, still resting back in his armchair. His right hand was holding onto his mug, resting on one of the armrests, and the other one was rubbing at his forehead. “It sounds like the bad version of the movie,” he mumbled to himself, ignoring Sherlock’s scoff.

“Real life is hardly ever like a movie, John,” he said with a roll of his eyes.

“But wait, who was that Hudson fellow, then? And how did he know all that about Carters?” the doctor inquired.

Sherlock nodded in agreement. “Good question. That is what we wondered, too. But reading back, we noticed that Hudson was the name of one of the Scott family’s servants. We can only assume that he survived long enough to have children, and to tell them about the stolen things. Upon returning to England, Carters claimed the Scotts’ fortune for himself with the documents he had stolen, shared it with his friend Jack, and then used most of his part to do what he had always wanted to do: study law and help people who lived like he had to before he became rich. And he did. He was an exceptionally good man. In the diary, he claims, after the sinking of the ship, that he had intended on giving the papers back, that he felt guilty about it, but that he never could. So the least he could do was give the money a good use.”

“Wow. That’s… an incredible story,” John said, still looking thoughtful.

“Victor thought so, too. He went to look for any surviving member of the Scott family, but found none. It disturbed him, a bit, that he could not ask them to forgive his grandfather, but what else could he do?”

“It wasn’t his fault, any of it,” John said.

“He’s that kind of person. The next day I returned home, and the last I heard of him was a letter that he sent me to inform me that he was moving to America, that he needed the change. He decided that law wasn’t really his thing, and wanted to do something else entirely, and not be bound to the family tradition, not after that. And I didn’t hear again from him,” he finished with a sigh.

“You… that’s ridiculous!” John pointed out.

“I’ll remind you that the world wasn’t always as connected as it is today. There wasn’t always the internet. I’m sure you haven’t forgotten that,” Sherlock said with a raised eyebrow.

“God, of course I haven’t. Good times. Still, now there is. You could look for him, even on the phone book!”

“Well, I am famous and he didn’t even once think of googling me, apparently, so why should I go and look for him? He doesn’t even have a peculiar name,” he retorted, crossing his arms petulantly.

“Right, good excuse. Maybe he felt bad or embarrassed about the whole mess with his grandfather, did you never consider that? Maybe he thought that it had ruined your friendship, somehow. People’s minds work like that, too, ridiculous as it might be.”

“Why are you insisting so much on this?” Sherlock asked, almost angrily.

“Because I see how you’re talking about him, and you seem very fond of him, and it’d be nice for you to have another friend other than me, Mrs Hudson, and the man you occasionally work for!” John replied, standing up and taking the mugs to go and wash them, leaving a thoughtful Sherlock alone in their living room.

**Author's Note:**

> This is the start. The story is not finished yet because I had to rewrite it (as I said my laptop was stolen), and I only had the prologue left. It might take a while longer, but I didn't want to wait anymore to publish it. I'm already as late as it gets.  
> My exams will be over in just about a week, anyway, so if you all leave reviews and kudos, hopefully I'll be quicker...
> 
> Once again, many apologies to the ever so patient ineffableboyfriends. I never (and still don't) feel ready for publishing when it comes to this story, always editing to try and make it as perfect as I can, but I hope you'll like it regardless of how poorly written it is!
> 
> Please, consider buying me a coffee on [my ko-fi page](http://ko-fi.com/stravaganza)! I'd really appreciate your support!

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Past, Present, (Possible) Future - Book Cover](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1732658) by [stravaganza](https://archiveofourown.org/users/stravaganza/pseuds/stravaganza)




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